Chapter 258: Chapter 258: Zane’s POV

Chapter 258: Zane’s POV

The second the explosion hit, every head in that room turned toward the sound.

Every head except mine.

I’d been waiting for exactly that. One second. One half-second of distraction was all I’d ever needed, and the man closest to Olive’s chair had it stolen from him before he even registered what was happening.

I closed the distance in two strides.

My knife found his gun hand before he could bring it back around, and the blade went in just deep enough to make him drop the weapon and not deep enough to be the thing that killed him, because there wasn’t time for either of us to find out what would have happened if I’d gone deeper.

He screamed.

I didn’t care. I had his gun in my hand before it finished clattering to the floor and put a round into the man behind him before that one even finished turning.

Two down.

“Zane—” Olive started.

“Stay down.”

I didn’t have time to explain it better than that.

The other three men were already moving, fanning out the way men do when they’ve been trained to take a target out, and I went low, fast, putting the table between me and the nearest line of fire while I worked the room the only way I knew how to work it.

A shot caught the wall an inch from my head. Close enough that I felt the heat of it.

I came up behind the man who’d fired it and ended that particular problem before he could fix his aim a second time.

Across the room, Cole had finally done the stupid thing I’d watched him building toward the entire time I’d been in that doorway.

He’d thrown himself sideways out of his chair, rope still half-tangled around one wrist, straight into the legs of the man closest to him, and for one absurd, almost funny second it actually worked… the man went down hard, off balance, gun skittering away from his hand.

Then it stopped being funny.

The last man standing turned his gun on Cole instead of me, and I wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t close enough, could only watch it happen from fifteen feet away as the shot caught him in the side and put him down hard against the concrete.

“COLE.”

That was Olive’s voice. Raw. Real.

I didn’t have time to check on him yet. He might survive or not, that was totally on him.

I put the last man down, and across the room a woman was already moving toward Olive’s chair, fingers tearing at the rope around her wrists with a speed that came from pure adrenaline rather than skill.

It took me a full second to place her.

Ruby.

I’d heard the name passed back to me an hour ago, secondhand, from someone reading off whatever Alonso had finally admitted to…the wife I’d buried in paperwork years ago, somehow standing in this room, somehow on the right side of tonight instead of the wrong one.

I didn’t have time to feel whatever I was supposed to feel about that. Filed it away instead, I will deal with her later.

The knot finally gave way just as I crossed the room toward both of them.

The second Olive’s hands came free, she was on her feet.

I didn’t think, nor consider planning it.

My hand found the back of her neck and I pulled her into me and smashed her lips against mine in an instant, like the last twelve hours hadn’t happened, like I hadn’t spent the entire night running calculations about whether I’d ever get to do this again, every piece of fear and rage and relief I’d been holding down since that screen lit up in Simon’s club coming out at once with nowhere else for it to go.

She kissed me back just as hard. Both hands fisted in my shirt like she needed something to hold onto that wasn’t shaking.

“I’m fine,” she said, the second we broke apart, breathless, like she needed to say it before I could ask. “I’m fine, Zane. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

“I’m fine enough.”

I held her face in both hands for one more second, just looking at her, the bruise on her cheek, the exhaustion underneath it, and then I made myself let go, because Cole was still on the ground behind her, and the blood pooling under him wasn’t slowing down.

I looked at him.

Something cold and unsympathetic moved through me.

Easiest thing in the world would’ve been to leave him there. He’d earned worse than a bullet from where I was standing, and some ugly, honest part of me was already turning toward the door Simon had disappeared through.

“We can deal with him after,” I said.

“No.”

“Olive—”

“No, Zane.” She didn’t look at me when she said it. Didn’t look soft about it either. “I’m not leaving anyone to die on a floor, even him. That’s not pity. That’s just not who I am.”

I didn’t argue. There wasn’t time to, and some part of me respected the answer too much to waste breath fighting it.

“Get him out,” I told one of my men who’d just cleared the doorway. “Get a medic to him. I don’t care what happens to him after that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Olive didn’t go to him. Didn’t kneel back down, didn’t say anything to him at all, just stepped back and let the man do his job while she turned to look at the door Simon had used.

“He’s gone,” I said.

“I know.”

“I’m going after him.”

“I’m coming.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Olive.”

“I’m not asking, Zane. Please… He ioeld my brother… He ruined somany livesandI’m notgoing to sit back and watch you takeall of these alone.”

I looked at her for a long second. The bruise. The blood still on her hands that wasn’t hers. The look on her face that told me arguing about this was going to cost more time than just accepting it.

I groaned.

“Fine,” I said. “Fine. Stay behind me. Exactly behind me, the entire time.”

“Fine.”

“I mean it.”

“I heard you the first time.”

I grabbed a second weapon off one of the men on the floor and put it in her hand anyway, because if she was coming, she wasn’t coming unarmed, and she should also know what she was walking into, and we walked toward the door Simon had vanished through together.